Tag Archives: departure

“So typical!” she thought after having gotten the message about his running late:

“Traffic. B there in 5. Smiley face.”

The part about the smiley face was written out. In the very moment of reading his message, she was not tickled by his charm at all. The joke felt stale and smart-Alec-y, and it was probably aimed at her expense:

Well! He remembered that but not that I despise tardiness. “So disrespectful!” she muttered to herself.

She’d already parked the car and taken the stairs. A lanky man going the opposite way in the staircase overheard her. Behind his bifocals, he blinked rapidly and hugged the wall a little more. A tourist! She, for a brief moment, considered covering it up: by pretending to be on her cell phone or improvising a tune to which the overheard words could belong. But she was too annoyed. She clammed up until alone again, on the next flight of stairs.

What irritated her the most, it seemed, was that after all these years, he hadn’t changed at all. She had. She had had to! He’d altered the course of their lives with a single request to end to their marriage four years ago. She moved herself across the country, as if her shame would lessen with no mutual witnesses around. She’d gotten tired to wrench her guts out in front of friends. Their sympathy was too short of a consolation anyway, with nothing on the other side of it — but an even more agitated loneliness.

In a new city, she could blame all the hardships on her relocation. That way the divorce would come secondary; and on the list of common fears — moving, death, break-ups, public speaking — some of hers would be at least on the same plank. Divorce or departure. Departure or divorce. They became interchangeable causes for every new obstacle for a while. But eventually, each claimed its own time of day. Departure took the daylight, while nights were consumed by the consequences of the divorce. She started going to bed earlier.

When things weren’t well, she’d text-message the ex. It was a habit of the fingers — not of the heart. She took him bouncing between her little devastations and the recently increasing occurrences of her gratitude. No matter her original intention though, they always ended up bickering. Recycling became their long-distance pattern. But it seemed to her — and she knew she wasn’t alone in this — they both found comfort in that repetition, how ever painful the results.

“Fuck that, D! What do YOU want?” her stepbrother Tommy, with whom she’d grown close through all of this, would say. The man never slept; and when she called in the midst of her own insomnia, she’d often catch him painting at sunrise in New York, never having gone to bed at all.

Tommy was adamant that no good would come from her constant contact with the ex. “All you’re doing is delaying the pain, man. He won’t change. It’s all about you!”

But that was exactly was she feared. It was easier to fish for an apology — or at least a recognition — in her interactions with the ex: some sort of an acknowledgement of all that former goodness of hers that he had taken for granted, by ending it. It was as if she’d wanted him to love and lose again (someone else, of course, because even she wasn’t dumb enough to go in for seconds), just so he could learn to miss her. It was the only route to getting even that she had known.

The ex and she continued fighting. For weeks afterward, she’d wait for an apology. There would be substantial silence (in which she began to see glimpses of a lighter life, a better self). After a timeout though, his messages would come in flurries, a few days in a row: Some woman wore her perfume on the subway. He’d found an old photo in his college notebook. A mutual friend had asked about her. He missed her legs, her hair… By what right?!

In the beginning, she did respond reflexively, as if flattered by the contact. But when his tone turned whiny — he “missed her”, “wanted her” — she got irritated fast: Who’s fault was that, exactly?! And when he began insinuating at his lust, she would get struck with guilt toward his new woman. The pattern grew old, like the baby blanket from her own childhood which she’d been saving for her firstborn. The firstborn took its time happening while the blanket became a reminder of yet another one of her inadequacies. She began to feel hard of forgiveness. There was no way around it: He’d made a mistake; and she, still picking up the pieces on the receiving end, failed to let go.

“I mean: Do you even want him back?” Tommy sounded flabbergasted. He seemed so different from her! Stronger.

But Tommy was different: He belonged to a separate genetic line of bold spirits: artists, entrepreneurs, environmentalists, marine biologists, heros. At family gatherings, they all came in with colorful stories about the world in which neither habit nor fear seemingly played any role. Her people were hospital administrators and medical assistants, for as long as she remembered. Being concerned with records of pain, causes and possible treatments was their daily bread.

“I like it,” one said, “I think” (unusually sheepishly for her nature). “It’s got some,” she rotated her wrists up in the air, looking for the less poetic word, “‘good light’.” It took a talent to be so vague. Or it took years of mutual knowledge and histories of hurt.

The younger one averted her eyes quickly. She was getting better at busying herself in the kitchen. Throughout her childhood, she’d witnessed mother’s chaos when other people came over to visit their place. They had been lucky that way, due to her father’s reputable profession: Always finding better living quarters, so others came over quite a bit. Wanting to be the talk of the town, mother buzzed and chattered in the kitchen; and she would bang the drawers with aluminum dinnerware and slam the cupboards in an orchestra of her exhibitionist domesticity.

While mother whipped up meals and refilled drinks, her girlfriends wandered around nosily, every once in a while coming upon a tiny girl, with eyes so large they took up half of her face, playing her own game of house in the furthest corner of the bedroom. Alone.

“So cute!” the women hissed, turning on their heels unhappily for having to divert their poking.

Mother continued conducting the percussions in her kitchen:

“She’s so quiet, that child! She’s all — my husband!”

The women moved about the living-room; lurked by the family’s photographs; touched, shifted, sniffed, demanded to know the origin of things:

“You are one lucky bitch, I hope you know.”

“They meant it as a compliment,” after the women’s departure, mother would attempt to clarify things — the delicate things that her daughter could not understand yet (but perhaps with time, she would). The evil smirk of the local Algebra teacher branded itself into her memory: How could these women mean anything good? But mother didn’t want to hear it: “Stop asking stupid questions anyway! This is adults’ business.”

But now:

“So,” the older woman spoke from the bedroom doorway and eyed the open, empty space. “Are you going to ask Mike to ship you the bed?” (Pause.) “Or do you plan to house this draft in here forever?”

“What do you mean by that?” the young woman stopped, knife in her hand.

“I mean, haven’t you, guys, divided things up officially yet?”

The young woman looked back down at the gutted pickled fish under her fingers, on the cutting board. It was a task that every Russian woman performed from A to Z. From A to YA. From A — to I. Her mother would’ve drowned the detailed fish in a pool of sunflower oil; and it would stare out, with dehydrated eyeballs from underneath a layer of butchered onions meant to cover up a job so messily performed.

While peeling onions, mom would begin to cry demonstratively:

“Oy! I so pity the little bird!”

What did the bird have to do with the fish? The bird — to I. The I — to eye. Still, mother was a funny actress, so the child would spit with laughter. She couldn’t help it: She was still in love with her original prototype back then.

She now thought of that one time a thin fishbone lodged in her throat for a week; and how she gagged every night, while mother hooked her sharp nails into the back of her tongue. For months to follow, sometimes, loose scales would reveal themselves stuck on her clothes or skin; or swimming in buckets of water with floor-scrubbing rags. Mom was a disaster in the house.

In her own kitchen, however, the young woman never kept the head. She wished she had a cat to feed it to. A cat — to make-up for the missing child, to make the loneliness less oppressive. She stared at the oval crystal bowl, with even filets of pink meat, neatly arranged.

She herself was a better housekeeper, yet heading toward a divorce nonetheless. Most likely:

“Mike and I aren’t talking, mom. You know that.”

“Oh! Yes. I see,” the old woman eyed the empty bedroom yet again: Why so much space for someone with defeated ovaries then? “You, young people! You have no concept of marital endurance any more.”

She swore, he thought of the idea first. At least, that’s how she remembered it. In his defense (why was she so willing to defend him?): In his defense — she wasn’t “willing”. He was right.

“It’s just that… something isn’t working,” Mike told her over the phone, the week of one Thanksgiving which they’d agreed to spend apart. He “couldn’t do it anymore”. Her work. Her books. Why was he always taking second place after her life? Once she hung up, she cried, of course, but mostly out habit; and out of habit, she started losing weight and sleep. That’s what a wife in mourning was supposed to look like, she decided. She cropped her hair, and started wearing pants and laced up wingtip shoes. In their crammed-in basement apartment in the Bronx, she found room to pace and wonder, “Why? Why? Why?”

Her girlfriends were eventually allowed to visit the site of her disastrous marriage. They bitched; they called him names. They lurked, touched, shifted, sniffed. They studied family photographs, still on display, for signs of early check-outs. The women patted her boyish haircut and teared up a bit too willingly, some of them — being slightly grateful for feeling better about their own men.

And then, one balmy New York August afternoon, she called him from a pay phone in Harlem.

“Meet me for dinner.”

An hour later, he showed up with lilies. After a dry peck that tasted unfamiliarly, she lead the way to a Dominican joint whose wall-full of French doors was always taken down for the summer. It breathed the smell of oil — and of fried everything — onto the sweaty pedestrians on Broadway.

On their side of the missing wall, the night dragged on with a strained politeness. His eyes were glossy, wet. She stared out onto the street. From either the heat of New York’s August and the lack of ventilation, the giant buds sweated under the plastic wrap; and by the time they finished picking through a pile of fried plantains, the lilies open completely, and just like everything at that time of the year — from sweat glands to subway sewers to perfume shops — they began to smell aggressively, nearly nauseating.

“I’m going to California,” she announced after finishing her white fish.

“Why?”

She looked down: After their six-month separation, she had begun to wear dresses and curl her hair again. She’d gained a certain swagger in the hips from wearing flat shoes through every season in New York. The flesh of femininity was finally beginning to lose the aftertastes of her youth’s self-loathing.

Not having gotten an answer, “When?” — he examined her with wet eyes of a lab.

She looked down again. The suppleness of her brown chest surprised her. She looked up: “Soon.”

Vagueness as a revenge: She’d learned that from her mother, the best that ever was! She owed him nothing. He was the one who’d given up! He was the one who left! But now, it settled at the bottom of her stomach, along with the plantains, like something begging for its freedom. And she, in her defense, was no longer “willing”.

At first, she said, sure: The lake would be “fine”. She went there a lot anyway, especially in the summer, with her books, only to fall asleep under their inky tents pitched over her face. The strangers, if they were to walk by, could probably tell what she was surviving, based on the titles under which she napped, giving up on her consciousness all to readily. From Goodbye, Mr. Chips to Goodbye, Columbus. (She must’ve had a hunch about all the departures she was about to endure). Then, at twelve years old, only two quarters after she got her period, she slept with The Woman Who Gave Birth to Her Mother. That shit was written like fiction and she felt the anger swelling, beyond control for the first time since her mother had ran off: anger — at all of those fuckers who managed to wedge their lives into an arc of a neat story, with lame metaphors and cute closures. All so fucking neat, with a ribbon on top!

Her life was not like that at all. But then, Forgive but Never Forget was even worse; while Zen and the Art of Love had her stoned on the dullness of someone’s clinical explanation of the pure chaos she had always thought human emotions to be. (But maybe she was just different.) The Power of Now — who wrote that shit?! — made her ravenous with envy at those whose nows were tolerable enough to want to be IN them. But still, she could always have books. It was the only thing on which she had learned to rely, the only journey she could actually choose for herself; and she would secretly crave, upon every first sentence of every newly picked-up tome, that it would speak to her in her own language; just so that she could nod and slap its pages: I know EXACTLY what that feels like!

By the time this kid came along — lanky and greenish-white, like one of those strange tropical insects that trembled at the slightest breeze, along with the stems against which it camouflaged itself — she had entertained a sliver of amusement: What in the world was he planning to do with her? It wasn’t even about the matter of her substance — but all about THE matter. Her matter. Her body. If you have a body — you must matter. Well, ain’t that a crack o’ shit?

She knew she wasn’t a stunner. Not by any means. But with what was given to her — she knew what to do quite well. It had to have come from her mother, this awareness of her appeal, the sweet ‘n’ sour smell of her own sex. Her shit wasn’t abrasive like that heavy decor she had seen her contemporaries wear, whenever they stopped by the diner after a night of clubbing. She would be working a graveyard shift, serving mostly the exhausted truck drivers who, having ran off and driven away from their troubles, now couldn’t stop running; and they watched her with their sad golden retriever eyes, as she poured them refills of bitter coffee and seconds of tenderness. When the uptight cops accompanied by their boisterous rookies, horny on their illusions of power, came in, a difficult silence would cover the whole place like a dome. Even if just for a minute, everyone got quiet, which made her think that in life, no one was really innocent. No one — was clean. (But still, shouldn’t her mother have given up on the idea of being entitled to happiness?)

Right around three in the morning, the young came in, with their tipsy laughter and entitled cravings. This is where the boys usually closed their deals, taking their prey home. Or not. Somehow, all that trying made her nose itch with the reek of despair. Her own thing was made of simplicity; and in simplicity, one never had to find herself embarrassed: for doing too much, for going out on the limb way-way too far. For the despair, for the loneliness; for the need — to matter. Besides:

Sex was easy. Staying — was hard.

But, she said, sure. The lake would be “fine”. (It would be a downgrade from finding herself alone there, she suspected immediately after agreeing. But still, it would be “fine”. For now.)

The kid gulped. “Cool… Um, yeah…” He scanned her face, nearly shivering from surprise: Was she just fuckin’ fucking with him?

She push-pinned her pupils into his: Sure you can hack this, buddy? His eyes seemed incapable of sitting still in their orbits. She just noticed that. Bad vibe. A red flag. Intuition activated.

But fuck it! “The lake would be fine.”

“Well, cool. Yeah. Um, tell you what: I’ll call yah on Saturday, yeah?” (Stumbling over his words, he’d won himself some time to get his cool back. He was grooving now.) “We’ll set something into motion.” (Sorta.)

It had to be hard: to see this much, to understand so much. But she wouldn’t know any different. She seemed to have been born with no skin in between her and the rest of it all. Even as a kid, she remembered feeling people even before they opened their mouths and convoluted her intuition with their noise. So, she went into her books: Was there — or had there ever been — anyone else like this? But after she woke up to her father, weeping on the doormat, one morning — a man broken, the consequences of his goodness discarded — and after she joined him there and cradled his graying head in the dusty footprints of her departed mother, she assumed that the two of them were just born different from the rest. But they had each other. And she would always have her books.

She scanned her inners for that same sensation: The heavy warmth of maternity she had previously felt toward some of her lovers. Nope. None. The kid left her cold. Outside the phases of having to work, work, work — then to recuperate — she felt nothing. And as she watched him limp away, with not even a look in a departing cliche over his shoulder, “It is all way too easy,” she thought. So, when did it turn so hard?

Shit. Well, that’s cool… I guess. She said, “Yeah.”

(Fuck! I was totally wrong! This chick’s got lower self-esteem than I thought.)

Swelling. This is good.

But what’s good for me — is not so good for the bitches. I build myself up on the parts I borrow. I take. They call it “love”, them silly broads; I call it rehab. I’m just taking back what was taken from me. (Thanks, mom.)

I take my power back. That way, if a broad ever leaves me, she won’t have much to go around after. She won’t move on undamaged into the arms of the next guy. Fuck THAT shit! ‘Cause I leave a mark, man. I make myself indispensable. So, it’s a win-win for me: I feel better — she feels like shit. That’s the only way I know.

True that: Sometimes, I wish I could just disappear. Make a shit load of money and go away. I could just live on my couch then, with my TV, and my health food and internet porn. Eat well, sleep forever, get other suckers to serve me. I could then buy myself pussy whenever I wanted, then kick it to the curb. I wouldn’t have to work for it any more.

(I mean it actually would’ve been better, as Ashley said in her last text, if I weren’t born at all. But it’s not like I had a choice in the matter, hon. So, instead, I get myself what I want, at whatever price. I weave the lies, tell ‘em what they wanna hear. I can even make my shrink’s eyes bulge out with my stories. I can say anything to a broad to get her, and she can keep coming around until I start picking up on the hints of her attachment. Then, it’s over, man. Like, A-SAP! No one gets hurt. Well. Maybe, she gets hurt, but how’s that my problem? I’m just taking what’s mine. I’m taking what was never given to me. And I get my revenge.)

(Except. Ashley. Ash. How could she erase me like that? As if I weren’t born at all?)

Be kind, be kind. Must always be kind. Be kind onto others. Which is not the same as being kind onto yourself.

The silly self: It’s like a whimpering babe, looking at her with confused eyes. Why aren’t you coming for me? Don’t you know how much I need you? Poor thing, so dumb and innocent, it knows not its ignorance is bliss; but need, need, need. I need you, need you, need you — to be you.

But she forsakes it. It can make it on its own. That’s the Darwinian rule that she had obeyed for years; the rule that had been done onto her, when her mother fled her marriage and parenthood in the family’s fourteen-year old Honda to live in Portland, with a lover — a vegan milkshake store owner. For her, it wasn’t: Do onto others as you do onto yourself. (Some people can be so selfish, mother!) But she had had a life-long history of being better to others — better for them — than to her whimpering self.

There’s time enough, she thought; and maybe later she could retire to finally tend to her needs. By then, the self would be so tired (although she swore she had been tired ever since she was thirteen). But she would tire herself out enough to retire, with babies and her future husband’s nightly strewn socks all around their bedroom. Until then: She had to be kind.

A decade ago, she used to be angry. At all times, at nearly everything. “It’s my prerogative! I am what I am,” said the ego. Except that it was all wrong: She was kind. Always kind. She was the daughter of her father — a gentle man who, despite the damages done onto him, had never done it onto others; and being his next of kin came with the same unbalanced, unjust genetic mechanics of selflessness and never knowing how to ask for a favor.

But even though, in her youth, she would hold onto the anger, she felt it falling flat every single time, after the initial sensation in her body. Like an off-key tune, it was uncertain and wavering; blue and slightly disappointed. Like a story without an arc: Who needs it?

“This is how I’ve always fended for myself,” she would defend the anger to her departing lovers and move the hair out of her eyes with a furious head shiver. The lovers couldn’t understand why she insisted on living her life in so much difficulty. Not everything had to be understood so thoroughly, so completely. She “should learn to let go”.

Fine by me! Go! Go on and leave!

But they would miss her, she was sure of it; because in between all those hollow spaces of anger, she always offered kindness. Kindness pro bono. Kindness at the end of every day. And besides, she had always made it clear they were never the point of of her unrest. Instead, they could revel in her love, her compassion or her charity — all depending on the degree of availability of her kindness. So, how difficult could it be to be loved by her?

But you should go! Go ahead and go!

In those moments, she recalled an actress in a film that her mother seemed to be watching every single time she’d walked in on her. The actress was good at crying well, with no resistance in her face. And on that particular line, “Go! Just go!” the actress would close her eyes completely, like someone aware of being watched. And she, catching a glimpse of both actresses in the room, would always wonder: “Why the fuck is she wearing full make-up, in a heartbreak scene?”

The departing would never find another her, she thought to herself; and she was right: They wouldn’t. But with all the others — who weren’t her — things were slightly easier and more vague. Others left room for misinterpretation, so that the lovers could live out their love in mutual illusions, until the first point of cross-reference. Hearts could be broken then, expectations — disappointed. But they would’ve had some wonderful times by then.

And yes, with time, easy became boring; but boring — gave room to calm. And into the calm, it was easier to retire. Because in the end, we were all simply so tired.

So, be kind. Must always be kind. She almost terrorized her lovers with kindness, which was shocking to the recipients, in every beginning. It made her unusual, unlike all the others. The lovers could not have suspected, though, that she was merely collecting a reserve of it for when the going got harder, because it always would; and because the first time the anger came up in each affair, it stayed. One note. No arc. Just co-habituating with the rest of her, not necessarily parasitically.

Some lovers would attempt to rescue her from the anger. (Sometime, infatuation liked to pose as love.) These more ambitious ones would suffer the most, from her resistance, from the complexity of her constant devotion to truth. And only when they, finally tired from it — or of it — raised their first objections, she flaunted all the moments of previous kindness in her self-defense.

How she hated herself for turning calculating, pitiful and shrill! After those endings, she would have to find healing in closure that took more time; because self-forgiveness was harder to summon by someone who did onto others better, than she did onto herself.

But they all would remember her kindness at least, she told herself. In the end, they all would. And, again, perhaps, she was right. But no one could ever survive the lack of self-love.

I could do this one, why not? She’s kinda cute. Hot, actually. She’s hot, and that’s so much better anyway. She’s not one of those gorgeous girls who thinks she’s outta my league. Fuck those bitches! They get too expensive, anyway. But this one is not like that, man. I wonder if she’s the type that doesn’t think she’s beautiful at all. Which makes it even easier.

I should ask her out. ‘Cause I could probably do this one, easily… Hands down!

Okay, maybe not “easily”. She called me “Patrick” last night.

My name is Dave.

Shit, man! Just look at her! Leaning over the edge of the bar, so obviously flirting with Stan. Stan is old, but he can get a girl nice ‘n’ liquored up, I guess. I tolerate Stan. And that’s as far as I go with people.

Stan is, like, seriously deprived of love. His woman is a total bitch to him, you can tell by the way he cranes his neck whenever he talks to a broad. Any broad. Like a fuckin’ abused dog that expects to be hit between his eyes for chewing on her slipper, just ‘cause he just wanted to taste the sweat of her feet. Stan’s woman must castrate him every day, for breathing too loudly or for not looking the part, or some shit. And I bet she thinks she should be with someone better.

Look at him! Just look at him now! God! He’s shaking just ‘cause this girl is nice to him. God…

I hate dogs!

Maybe Stan’s got a giant one. Chicks always say that it’s not important. But that’s just bull, if you ask me. I’ve seen ‘em looking at me when there is no point of going back and I’m staring them in the face, erect but less than a handful. Nerve-racking enough to shrink anyone.

“Ohm,” they say and look up at me with that face, as if I got them the wrong thing for Christmas.

I wonder if it’s those fuckin’ pills. I told John, I’d rather be bald. But then, his woman chimed in: “Jenna”.

“I wouldn’t fuck Prince William, with that hair of his,” she said.

First of: Who wants to date a chick called “Jenna”?! Or “Trisha”? “Trish”. Sounds like a diner waitress with three grown children by another man, at home.

Anyway, “Jenna” has this habit of going out to our fridge, in the middle of a night, in nothing but John’s wife-beater. She’s a bartender, comes over after her shift. Drunk. I hear them fuck. I try to tune ‘em out, so I blast some ESPN, or fucking Transformers 3, I don’t care. Whatev. But it’s like this chick’s got police sirens for her moans. And the really fucked-up thing is: They really turn me on. It’s like having a live porn sound-feed from across the hall. So, I’ve started waiting for John to finish his first round; come out to the living-room, turn on the TV and I watch her, as she runs to the bathroom. (Why do chicks always have to pee after sex? Does urine kill sperm? I fuckin’ hope so!) But then, she comes out, all flushed and glossy from splashing water on her face and thighs; all the fattier places bouncing on her body.

John told me “Jenna” likes big ones. Makes her ears plug up, she says. And she’s got this vein that pops out in the middle of her forehead. Makes John worried she’ll hemorrhage to death on day, if he keeps winding up her sirens like this. So yeah, it matters, he says. Size matters.

“Jenna” lies to my face. Says it’s all about the man’s hair:

“I’d rather fuck a bald guy than Prince William.”

So, these days, whenever she comes over, I watch TV with my cap on. “Jenna” has these sick nails and she always paints them red; and she likes to rough out the top of a man’s head, then pull his face into her breasts and smother his silly grin with them. But not me! Not this guy!…

Ah, shit! Just look at this one though! She’s still talking Stan up and I can see that jittery part of her thighs from the way she hangs on the bar. This one is hot. Kinda like “Jenna”. That’s the problem.

And I can tell she is not like one of those chicks back in college who liked to brag about sex all the time and confuse the attention they aroused — for being liked. Those chicks had seriously low self-esteem. But this one doesn’t talk sex. She moves sex. And we are all deprived.

The roles reversed: When I departed, nearly twenty years ago — so reckless in my youth and dumb — he was the last to disconnect our gazes.

Such had to be the burden of the ones we left behind! And such — the mindless blessing of the ones with great adventures to distract them from the pain of leaving.

What courage it had cost him — to hold the ground and not crumble then, until I turned the corner! And how I would never learn it, until I birthed a child, myself!

And yet, he did: My darling old man. The hero of my lifetime doomed to never disappoint my expectations.

The one to whom my every love would be compared: the ultimate ideal for a man’s goodness. My goodness.

The one who, in tumultuous times, had to commit the ultimate, unselfish act of love — and let me leave in my pursuit of bigger dreams than our homeland could offer. (Would those dreams turn out to be worth our mutual sacrifice? My life is yet to reveal its bottom line. But how I pray!)

And when my hardships happened, oceans away — the one to suffer heartbreaks of a parent’s helplessness and the titan strength of prayer.

The one to not let go, despite the distances and family feuds. (Alas, human stupidity: It never fails to permeate a story.) The one to change in order to keep up. The one — to love and wait.

And pray.

This time, I saw him first!

The crowds of tired passengers were whirling all around him: Loves leaving, in their acts of youthful recklessness or being pulled by bigger circumstances. The lucky ones — were coming home. The floor tiles of the airport endured the writing of rushed footsteps, scoffed wheels of those things that people felt they had to bring along; the punctuation of chic heels of pretty girls; the patter of children’s feet, so blissful and undamaged in their innocence. Tomes could be written if every footstep could be interviewed: The snippets of humanity’s stories that were so often unpredictable, impossible to imagine. But when these stories happened to make sense — when stubborn courage persevered, when love learned to forgive — they found unequal beauty. (Oh, how we could all pray for that! Oh, how we should pray!)

One million more of pedestrians could be packed into the terminal — and I would still recognize my father’s outline. The mind’s a funny thing, of course: Recently, it began to blackmail me with forgetfulness. The first nightmare in which my father had no face — would be the turning point I’d call Forgiveness.

But when I saw him — and I saw him first! — I knew that I would not be able to forget him, ever! Because he was the one I’d spent half a lifetime trying to get back to; the one with whose name I’d christened my every accomplishment; with which I had defeated every failure. He was the love; the never failing reason for it. My starting point and the North Star whose shine I followed to find my way, in and out of grace, and back again.

And when I saw him first and called him: “Oh, my goodness!”

It had to be a prayer, for I had learned to pray — in order to come back.

No cinematic trick can capture the surreal speed with which he turned in my direction. The mind sped up. It knew: This had to be THE memory of my lifetime. This — was where my life would turn its course; and in the morning, I would no longer be the prodigal daughter looking for her homecoming, but an inspired child of one great man.

He turned. The smile with which he studied my departure, nearly twenty years ago, returned to his face, this time, again: It was a tight-lipped gesture of a man trying his hardest not to crumble. The loss had been magnificent; an the return — worth every prayer.

I waved. And then, I waved again. The mind continued turning quickly. It had to remember every single detail of that day, so it could last forever. And fleetingly, it granted me a thought: The manner of my wave was very childlike, as if belonging to an infant mirroring a kind stranger’s hand. But in the moment, I knew no vanity. I cared none — for grace.

When dad’s hand flew up, I noticed: He’d aged. His timid gesture was affected by the trembling fingers and the disbelief of someone who hadn’t realized the perseverance of his prayer. C’mon! There had to be some moments in his life, historical events of giant hopelessness that the entire world endured since last I left, when he, like me, would lose the sight of reason.

Or maybe not. Perhaps, my father prayed! Perhaps, he prayed and bargained with his gods for this very opportunity to persevere life — and see my running back into his arms.

For this one moment, all — had been worth it! My life was worth when my father held me for the first time since nearly twenty years ago.

It started with our boarding of the trans-Atlantic flight — that carried us to Vienna — and which I nearly missed due to a row of fuck-ups on behalf the domestic airline that took me to D.C. One thing that I must say (in the domestic airline’s defense) is that the stewart who announced our landing did make a Christmas wish over the radio: He asked that every soul on that plane allowed those of us, in danger of missing our flights, pass through the doors first.

“Yeah, right!” I thought. “Like that’s gonna happen!”

My point exactly: A family of South Koreans flying in first class were the first to get out of their seats and block our way. And then, a miracle! They sat. Back. Down. And the entire plane remained seated, and we were given a priority.

Well, I’ll be damned: Humanity!

I started running, checked the schedule of international departures on the go and followed the arrows to my gate.

“Say what?! I have to catch a train?! Fuck me!”

With ten minutes before the plane’s departure, I was still running alongside the moving walkway — and I was actually faster than the mellow well-dressed passengers, much better suited for this spotless place.

“Wien?” a flight attendant with a German accent intercepted me.

“YES! WHERE?!” I was short of breath and seemingly out of my good manners.

“This way. We have been waiting for you, m’am.”

Well, I’ll be damned: What dignity!

A couple of other flight attendants who checked my boarding pass were equally as chill. Effortlessly, I passed through a pair of sliding doors and entered possibly the biggest aircraft I’ve ever seen. It was so giant that upon our landing (forgive the shortcut past the 9-hour flight here), TWO sets of exits opened to let us out. And it was one of those aircrafts that involved stairs leading down to the foreign soil; and then, THREE shuttles — waiting to deliver us to the Passport Check Point. So old-school!

After the silent man who stamped my visa page, there would be another security check, more doorless doorways and then another boarding, in the same old-school manner. This time, it would involve ONE shuttle and ONE set of doors.

“Dzien dobry!” the flight attendants cooed at me at the entrance of a seemingly brand new plane. They all had those gorgeous Polish noses, mellow faces and striking eyes.

Is this a European thing? By now, I began to wonder. This dignity, this slower manner that allowed for a well thought-out response: Was this what other travelers insisted I experienced — by going to Europe?

And it would indeed turn out to be the pattern in this city: In Warsaw’s every neighborhood, I would be treated with respect albeit some barely noticeable curiosity. The women here — always so gorgeous, I would gladly subscribe to the world’s conviction that there were no equals to them, anywhere! — would look at me with some off-kilter fascination. They wouldn’t be unkind at all, but they seemed to know I was one odd bird: Sort of from around here — but not really. Someone who understood them but, except for my communication via gentle manners I’d acquired with forgiveness, could barely respond.

Some men would be attracted but never spoke to me. Most studied me modestly and never interfered. One young and pretty creature stood aside, dumbfounded, and let me pass him. A few turned heads — but never spoke up. And no man would ever disrespect the woman he was with by being demonstrative with his curiosity at me.

Well, I’ll be damned: Respect!

The doors to my cabdriver’s car (he looked so very much like my father): Those doors just wouldn’t open. And I had tried a couple of them. My father’s kind lookalike, despite being in the midst of shuffling my bags, ran to assist me. He would attempt to open those doors upon my final stop, as well; but I was too American in my capabilities to wait for him.

The doors leading to the concierge office were impossible to locate. And only after going down a dodgy alley, with multicolored graffiti and smoking teenagers, did I finally locate the back door. (The only woman in that group — gorgeous and not easily impressed — squinted her eyes at me.)

I yanked the door. No luck. Embarrassed to look back at the hip smokers, by now struck with silence, I buzzed the first key on the intercom. Thankfully, someone chirped on the other end, and I was allowed to ascend.

The doors to our rented apartment required TWO sets of alarms and THREE sets of keys. I waved and wiggled the keychain with my electronic pass in front of the red-lit eye for nearly five minutes before an older woman — again, gorgeous, mellow and smiling — quietly demonstrated how to do it. The old fashioned key, like something out of my childhood’s fairytale, required some maneuvering in the lock. Finally, I entered the spartan place that would become my home, for this week.

And this story about my random visit of Poland — where, after sixteen years, I would reunite with dad — would continue to be about doors: The tubular, time-machine like doors of the shower; the heavy doors of every restaurant whose signs I could not decipher; the detailed doors of cozy cafes that would support my jet lag with their coffee; the wooden doors along the narrow cobble streets behind which I secretly wished to live (so that I could be closer — to dad); and the eventual folding doors of that ONE bus meant to bring my old man here —

TOMORROW!

I swear: I’d conquer so many more doors — and miles — to get to you, today!

They said their goodbyes over two cups of soup, in a narrow joint with floors filthy from the slush just outside the door. Instead of a doormat, the management had placed down sheets of cardboard. Not a pretty picture, but it was all somehow very… New York.

And the lines of their dialogue did not resemble any tragic love affair from the best of the world’s cinema. He was civil but not tender, just maintaining a casual conversation. It had been a chronic anxiety, for her, when others relied on the arrival of tomorrow. Since childhood, she was silly with her goodbyes, always making room for them. Just like she did that day: Insisting on sitting down for it, instead of aimlessly walking through the City that had seen way too many unhappy endings prior to theirs.

She had made a mistake of ordering something that sounded the most exotic, with yellow curry; but then she discovered ground chicken in it. She was a vegetarian. To save herself from the embarrassment — in front of him and the tired black woman working the line alone, during the rush of lunch hour — she pretended to eat around the white meat. Until he noticed it.

“You’ve gotta order something else!” he scoffed; and for the duration of their entire pathetic meal, which they’ve spent fully clothed, in their coats and he — in his hat, her mistake would be enough of a diversion from what was actually happening: He was leaving, like so many before him; looking for a graceful exit that no longer existed due to his cowardly procrastination.

“Oh, c’mon!” he kept trying to make her the pun of the joke. “You can’t just eat around the meat! You can’t keep doing… this thing that you do!”

Bingo!

A few months into the affair, he had begun reminding her of someone else. That day — on the repeatedly reiterated subject that suddenly so obviously annoyed him — she finally tracked it down: Someone else had happened to her, in this same City, nearly a decade ago. Someone else who had no intention of sticking around; who often got shamed of her in public — and in front off much chicer dressed young women, with whom he had to think he had a chance. Someone else who had hidden her from his family and friends, who pleaded for only private getaways; who gave her slivers of his time — if any — during the holidays. Someone else who’d made a good use of her youth and sex, but had no courage to end it.

Even back then, in her much younger — less jaded, more innocent — self, she felt something was akimbo. Not right. The intuition kept scratching on the ventricles of her heart. In those days, she wouldn’t call it that: Intuition. Not yet. She needed a few more disastrous repetitions and embarrassing endings — to become more in tune with her self-respect. But the sensation was already there: Something wasn’t right. By the universality of her gender, she knew: Not right.

Now, a decade older, she still couldn’t name it: that feeling of not being enough. Too poor, too orphaned; with not enough stock or family inheritance to her name. Pretty enough and selfless in bed — that was the only thing that made them last. But the awareness of that same feeling was beginning to land in the corners of her eyes with a melancholic recognition of the pattern: He — was leaving. Maybe not that day, and maybe not even after they would reunite at home, on the other coast. But eventually.

This trip had to end abruptly for him. He had to go. Maybe it could last a little longer: She could walk him to his town car. They could grab another drink at their hotel’s bar. But he would finish his cup of soup — and hers, with the chicken — then hug her outside the door, in the snow, among the locals who, just like their City, had grown indifferent to the sight of all endings. He would be clumsy, as that earlier someone else, trying to avoid meeting her eyes. Their height difference made it impossible though, so he would scurry off as soon as he couldn’t help but notice her face: Heartbroken.

“That’s right, fucker!” she thought of him meanly for the first time. “You will NEVER forget me!”

What else could she do to repair herself, in that moment — but to gloat in the peacefulness of her lack of guilt? She had been good, to this someone and the other one. To so many others, she had been good, or generous at least. It could’ve all been simplified in their honest communication of intentions. Instead, they had chosen to drag her along, while offering just enough attention but never too much of it. They procrastinated past the moment when she would fall in love; they scurry off into the landscapes of her Cities.

And the bloody New York — was still there. Like a background action shot, fabricated meticulously by a film crew, it continued to happen: with the never ending honking of cabs and beeping of closing and opening bus doors; with people coming and going — toward their dreams, careers and sex; or running away from love. Nowhere else did it smell or sound like this. And even with the strange sensation of something ending — something snapping and curling up to catch a breath — she knew she was still glorious: Because she loved it — all of it — so much!

“Never, never, never! You will NEVER forget me!” the City was humming along with her. And she didn’t even care about the already vague memory of someone leaving her behind, in it.

“Um… Los Angeles?” I said and somehow felt an immediate need to apologize.

“Ow. I’m so sorry,” he responded.

I looked at his squinting eyes: This one was meaning well, I think. His skin was brown and eroded by the exposure to the sun and to the demands of manual labor. And at the same time, I knew that there was peace in the simplicity of his survival needs.

A cowboy hat with tattered straw edges covered his hairline, but judging by the streaks of gray in his eyebrows, his head was most likely silver haired. Against the darkness of the skin, his baby-blue eyes stood out and promised me that I was talking to a good one. I quickly permitted for a flash of memory of my own old man — (What would he look like, now?) — and I decided that this one had to be meaning well.

“She ain’t so bad,” I said. I shook my head and smiled from underneath my own embarrassment on behalf of the City that everyone was so willing to leave. The moderately pleasant woman handing me my smoothie from behind the counter looked sideways at the cowboy, then at me.

So, I reiterated to them both: “No, really. She ain’t so bad.”

The night before I fled Her city limits, I took a risk and climbed up onto the 10 East. I was initially going to zoom through side streets, out of habit, while circumventing the intersecting onramps and the already buzzing malls. But when nearing a freeway underpass, I noticed the dashing by of traffic headlights. The cars were moving for a change, and so I took a risk.

At first, my path had to be negotiated with an impatient female driver of some Japanese-made SUV on her way to the Valley: She demanded her right of way toward the 405 merger by scowling and widening of her heavily made-up eyes at me, through her tinted, rolled-up windows.

“I’m not the one driving with an iPhone glued to her ear,” I thought, and motioned for her to pass.

She zoomed in front of me, honked in a departing act of her aggression, then stepped on it.

“Yeah. You, too!” I muttered in response. “You fuckin’…”

My navigation of the remaining six miles, however, lacked in adventures. In silence, I calmed down.

The cars were moving, and for the first time, I noticed the clearness of the night. It had been raining for a day and a half, and the asphalt in my lane was black and glistening. On the North side of the freeway, in the crisp, clear air I noticed the square skyscrapers, all lit up in silver. Is that Downtown? Nope, too soon for that.

I rolled down my windows. The air was crisp. The City was quiet. She smelled like sweating piles of leaves, pine sap and chimneys. The hellish pace of the looming holidays was coming upon us; and with the exception of the City’s newcomers, flooding her with their yet un-jaded dreams, Her every resident would begin to plot escape routes.

“She ain’t so bad,” I thought, that night.

I was, however, already that someone who’d preplanned her routes out of the City. To stick around would either turn out painfully lonely or exhaustingly disappointing.

And so, a day before the year’s first giant migration would begin, I drove out. At first, my way had to be negotiated along the loop of the 405 merger. But on the next Northbound freeway and for at least two hundred miles, the traffic would begin to move.

I studied the faces of the other drivers. The further North I drove, the more relaxed the others would appear. The permanent tension between my eyebrows softened, and I would talk myself out of my repertory of glares and profanity.

A gray-haired couple, cooped up inside their vintage Volvo hatchback along my ride through Santa Barbara, wasn’t talking. But in their intimate silence, they seemed to be conspiring against the world. A college-age girl in a white Honda with writing on its side window kept fiddling with her radio. Had she forgotten the tensions at the Thanksgiving table of last year, or was she born to parents who loved her unconditionally?

Couples with strapped-in children in the backseats seemed talkative as they discussed the lengths of their future stays at each other’s in-laws. The brown faces of Mexican workers seemed fancy free no matter the content of their weathered trucks: Some could be working in the vineyards, others — driving to the wealthy ‘hoods of Cambria and Morro Bay. The eyes of truck drivers appeared tired but content: Migrating through the country always promised an escape from obligations and other people’s stress.

I realized that other travelers kept their eyes on their destinations. They drove to: To places and addresses of their beloveds. To me, however, my from — was what propelled me:

From Her — I’ve learned to get away. From Her — I’ve learned to leave and somehow learn while leaving. But the more froms I would accumulate, the more often I found myself thinking, “She ain’t so bad” — when heading back.

It would take her years to process the truth. Not the truth of the last moment: Her, weeping at the airport into the shoulder seam of a man’s sweatshirt. She was upping the ante, that day. Making the ultimate bet, the win of which — would be her staying. (At least, she thought that was the win she’d wanted, at that last moment.)

And it was not the truth that he had been feeding her for years. No, not his truth: The truth that he begged her to accept, just so that he could buy himself more time. So that he could continue to have it both ways. Both women.

But how much more time could a man need? He had already taken six years out of her life. Six years out of her youth — and out of her better self.

When they first met, she still had a cherubic face: The same face he would’ve seen had he expressed an interest in seeing photos of her younger self. Her better self: The self before the sans six years had happened. It would’ve foretold the face of their firstborn, if he were to have any courage to follow through with the affair.

But then, perhaps, it was not a question of courage. It was quite possible that the matter narrowed down to the initial intention. Down, down went the spiral, to the root of the matter. On every loop, their faces changed. Their characters changed slightly, altered by each other: And that was the only way she could expect to matter, in the end. In the truth of that last moment, and beyond. After six years, she would have changed a man. She had happened to him. And after her happening, he had to have changed.

She failed to change him for the better. She couldn’t as much as change his mind to make her life — his first choice. For the duration of the affair, she would remain the back-up; the retreat in which he hid when things weren’t well at home. She would remain a fantasy. The Other Woman: The one that fabricated her own calendar, rescheduled her holidays and channeled each day toward the brief line-up of hours when she would see him; then, dismiss the rest. The one that pressured herself into better housekeeping, into whipping up gourmet meals and shaping her body into the best he could have had. His life’s first choice.

In literature, women like her were despised. They were often written mean, or needy; with serious daddy issues. Complete head cases, in films these women went berserk; and they would do the unthinkable things that later justified their suffering. They were insecure, although often very beautiful. Their puffy faces waited by the door on Christmas, and by the phone on birthdays. They were the back-ups, forever waiting for arrivals. They fed themselves on leftovers of loves. The paupers. The self-imposed outcasts. And their faces — sans the years that their lovers took out of their better selves — were the faces she never hoped to see in the reflection of closed store fronts, by which she, too, had waited all these years.

“A bright girl!” she had been called before. A bit naive, perhaps, but not an idiot. But it would take her years: because she wanted to believe that she was good enough to change his mind. Good enough to deserve love.

Up, up went the spiral, up to the clarity of truth. Not the truth that she had wanted to believe so desperately. Not the truth that may have been actual, when the lovers were intertwined: In those moments, he may have loved her; but no more than he loved himself. He too had to be thinking that he deserved love, that he deserved to have it both ways. That he deserved — both women.

The truth was to be found in the initial intention: The root of the matter. He never wanted her for keeps. An adventure, an escape from the dissatisfactions of his chosen life. In his chosen wife. That was the matter: He felt he deserved the comforts of the chosen wife and the fantasy — of the Other Woman. He deserved both.

The problem was: She was a good woman. A good girl. “A bright one”. And to protect himself from the guilt, he had to tarnish her. So, he would leave it up to her — to make the choice to stay. To be the back-up. He left it in her hands to keep on waiting, while he continued — to come back.

And he would have kept going until she lost the memory of her better self and would become that woman: that Other Woman, with puffy-faced reflections and reconstructed calendars. The pauper. The disregarded.

She would have lost her self-respect, and how could anyone respect a girl like that? So, he wouldn’t. He left it in her hands — to destroy her better self. And that would always justify his choice of the chosen wife.

But in the truth of that last moment, she upped the ante: He could either have her better self — or whatever was left of her, after the sans six years — or no self of hers at all. She left him to his chosen life.

And in that last truth, the only person who deserved compassion (because she still would not receive his better love) — was the man’s Chosen Wife.

The shades were closed. The house was dark. It had always struck me strange the way she’d keep all windows locked down, in order to keep the cold air inside. The manufactured cool would dry out her skin and the house would smell mechanical. She’d complain, blow the arid air through her deviated septum; then slather her age spots with some sort of bleaching cream.

She lived too close to the dessert; and only late at night, she’d give the house fans a rest. Their constant humming would finally die down, and suddenly the sounds of gentle quietness in nature would be overheard through an occasionally open window. The skin of my scalp would relax at the temples: I would forget to notice my constant frown during the 20-hour long humming. My face acquired new habits since living in this house, and I was beginning to forget the girl who had been asked to pay the price of her childhood — in an exchange for the better future.

But on that day, it was too early to allow the nature to come in, yet. And as I entered the empty house, I immediately noticed the hum. I had been gone for half a week: too short of a time to forget the climate of this house entirely — and most definitely not enough to forgive it! I took off my shoes, remembering the stare she’d give her visitors whenever they were too oblivious to obey. Slowly, I began to pass from room to room.

The light gray carpet that covered most of the house’s footage was immaculately clean. And if there was an occasional rug — under a chair or a coffee table — it usually marked an accidental spill of food or drink by a very rare house guest. I’d be the only one who knew that though: I’d witness all their hidden faults. And she would run the vacuum every night, pulling and yanking it in very specific directions. Those vacuum markings had to remain there undisturbed; and only those who didn’t know better were kindly permitted to destroy them with their footsteps.

I opened the bedroom’s double doors first but found no courage to come in. Instead, I stood on the cold titles, on the other side, and studied the footsteps by her bed. There was a cluster of them, right by the nightstand. Is that where she had been picked up by the paramedics? I looked for outlines of boots imprinted into the fur of the carpet. I thought I saw none.

The living room carpet seemed undisturbed. The markings of the vacuum, which she must’ve done the night before, were still perfectly parallel. The cold tiles of the kitchen floor had no residue of food. She’d wash those on her hands and knees with paper towels. And she would go over it until the wet towel would stop turning gray. No dishes in the sink. No evidence of an unfinished meal. No evidence of life at all. I began to wonder where she’d collapsed.

The door to my former bedroom was shut. Most likely, it had remained so since I’d departed. I made it to the office — the only space where some disarray was less prohibited. The bills where broken down by due dates and neatly piled perpendicularly, on top of one another. Her husband had a habit of resting his feet on the edge of the corner desk, as he played on the computer for hours, until she’d fall asleep. Then, he’d come into my bedroom.

My bedroom. Its door was closed. I turned the handle and expected for the usual catch of its bottom against the rug that she insisted on keeping on the other side. Strangely, it covered up no visible spots. I pushed it open.

It was a sight of madness. One woman’s rage had turned the place into a pile of shredded mementos, torn photos and broken tokens of forsaken love. The bedcovers were turned over. The sheets had been peeled off the mattress two-thirds down, as if by someone looking for the evidence of liquids near my sex. The stuffed toys which normally complete my line-up of pillows were now strewn all over the floor, by the wall opposite of my headrest.

On top of an overturned coffee table I saw my letters: My cards to her and hers — to me. She’d even found the letters in my parents’ hand, and she shredded them to piece. Nothing was off limits. No love was sacred after hers had been betrayed.

I stepped inside to see the other side of one torn photograph that flew the closest to the door. At first, I tried to catch my breath. A feeling on sickly heaviness got activated in the intestines. In murder mysteries that she adored to watch with me, I’d seen detectives scurry off into the corner furthest from the evidence, and they would throw up — or choke at least — at the atrocity of crimes against humanity. Apparently, my insides wanted to explode from the other end.

I paced myself. Carefully, that I, too, would not collapse, I bent down and picked up the shredded photo. It was my face, torn up diagonally across the forehead. On the day of my high school graduation, her husband had come over to the side of the fence where we were beginning to line up. I can see the faces of my classmates in the background. They smiling at his lens. They are supposed to, as he — was “supposed” to be my father.

He was not. And I’m not smiling. I’ve raised one eyebrow, and my lips are parted as if I’d just told him to fuck off. Not even there, he would allow for me to be without him. Not even there, I could be alone for long enough to remember the girl who’d been asked for her childhood in an exchange… for what?